Back in the days when I worked as a captain for other people on volume operations in the middle of the Pacific, I rarely got tipped. By the time we got back to the dock, the customers were usually in a real hurry to get off the boat quickly and away from the cretins working the decks. I was well-paid so I never even thought about it. My whole diving career, I never expected to be tipped since I was always adequately paid. Tips always surprised me. They were nice, but not necessary for me to live well in Honolulu.
When I worked for a small outfit, the guy there before me had tip hustling down to a science. He would stand on the stern just before we left the dock and announce that anyone who needed anything at all to please let him because, as he so mercenarially put it, "If you're not happy, then I don't get tipped!"
We had an eloquent nickname for him that I'm sure would show up as five asterisks - it starts with "w", ends in "e", and is not the word "where". He's even on the SB from time to time.
Until I moved to Florida, I had never heard of DM's working for free. On my clearer days, I vaguely remember something called the War Between the States to abolish slavery, but I'm not sure that it made it this far south.
I ran a six-pack for years and I paid my DMs $45 to $75 per trip, am or pm, and this was in the early 90's. What was amazing to me was how much I got tipped after I started working for myself and not driving or diving on cattle boats. My weekly average was over $150 and I was charging more than anyone else. And this was after my clients tipped the DM's!
So when I started diving down here on charter boats before I got my own overpowered hole-in-the-ocean, I was amazed when the DM's were explaining how things worked for them here. Tips? They work for free - and a lot of them do indeed work - damn hard! Some don't, or do such a pisspoor job that they not tipworthy.
I have had some really interesting talks with charter operators and shop owners down - stuff they sure don't want their crews hearing. Also, most captains should NOT get a cut of the tips since they own the business. Out in Hawaii, I would tell people they didn't have to tip me - I owned the company, but they had had such a great time that they just had to. I sure could never figure that part out, but hey, everyone was happy.
It might be nice to be running charters again down here so I could have people work for me for free. Maybe I could call it, "Uncle Tom's Diveboat"? Now I'm gonna get nasty spiritual IM's from Harriet Beecher Stowe...
